I love writing this column because not only is it cathartic for me, but because I can attempt to help some of the people in pain reaching out to me.

I can tell them that I understand their heartache. It is true that marriage problems come in all different shapes and sizes. However, there is still a commonality to losing one that you once believed was the ‘love of your life.’

In some of my deepest confusion and sorrow I couldn’t find a person to take my hand and walk me through it. I mean in the literary sense. I scoured the bookstores and found tons of books on the subject only they were expert laden, long, heavy books that I could not absorb or cheerleading ‘get past’ divorce voices that frankly, I didn’t want to hear.

Sure, there was “Eat, Pray and Love,” only traveling to far away countries to heal my pain wasn’t an option. I was stationed domestically state side to:

eat (and believe me I did),
pray (and believe me even God is crying Uncle from me at this point) and,
love (who? I’ve worn out all the people who love me most by staying in a bad situation too long.)

This morning I jump on Facebook and read a note from the heart of a friend and just now I sit before an e-mail from my friend, “Kiki.”

I struggle a bit when I feel their suffering. I don’t want anyone to hurt in this way that has become so familiar to me, yet was once so foreign to me.

“Kiki” lets me know that an otherwise unpredictable, confusion filled, heart breaking time is made even more confusing by the good intentioned advice of loved ones.

I empathize with her. Then I admit the truth – my personal truth.

The ones who loved me most fought for me the hardest. In some twisted irony, I turned a deaf ear and stayed with the man who loved me the least and fought for me the weakest.

The people who really loved me told me to get out, give up, and get going.

I knew they were right. I don’t know why an otherwise strong woman gave so much of herself to another human being that I became embarrassed by myself. I was a marital extreme. I was and became a divorce extreme. I am not proud of that. I want to be seen in the same well respected eyes I had always been seen in.

My sister who likes to go by the moniker “Foxy Roxy” told me three things over the years that I will never forget:

“Colleen you are smarter than this. Get out”

“Colleen why would you stay with someone who never loved you enough to fight for you as you did for him?”

“Colleen the best part of you was that you always saw the best in people”

I was listening only love is love. This inexplicable and magical existence that takes otherwise self-respecting, strong, capable, independent, smart individuals and renders us temporarily helpless.

I am not proud that I did not do divorce well.

I can only rely on my faith. I think I fell down farther than most so that I could help others get up.

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